


safe as houses

by thatdarkhairedgirl



Series: The Alphabet Series [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Character Study, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 02:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdarkhairedgirl/pseuds/thatdarkhairedgirl
Summary: If you can trust anyone, it’s your partner.[E for Emotive]





	safe as houses

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the **rarepair_shorts** 2018 Numbers Challenge. Prompts are from a generator. Special thanks to **watername** for her hand-holding.

 

 

**_forgetfulness_ **

 

Quills and anniversaries and her Auror badge, jackets and hats and lock combinations. Meeting times. Frank’s birthday. Her mother’s birthday. Her _own_ birthday. Her shoes, once, running off on twenty minutes sleep when the hearth call came in; she’d already Apparated to the scene before she realized, and Rufus had to transfigure a pair of gloves into slippers so she wouldn’t slice her bare feet open on all the broken glass.

Frank is fastidious; Frank is _fussy_ – any child raised by Augusta Longbottom would have to be, perish the mere _thought_ that Augusta’s precious only son could ever lose track of his favorite dress robes, or mismatch his socks, or misplace his paperwork in the piles stacked high on the desk he shares with Moody. Frank wouldn’t be seen with ink splattered over his shirtsleeves or leave coffee rings on his processing forms; Frank wouldn’t accidentally switch the slides in an important presentation; Frank _wouldn’t_ –

Alice, the only female Academy graduate this year; Alice, who works twice as hard to get half as far as her colleagues; Alice, who mutters apologies almost daily, slinks into Crouch’s interdepartmental meeting five minutes late and ignores the eyebrow telegraph that flashes between the higher-ups in the room. Frank frowns at her from his seat two rows over, tapping at his watch while she slides into the nearest empty chair. Rufus passes her some spare parchment and a fresh quill, the nib already sharpened.

“Thanks,” she whispers, scratching out notes, “I lost the memo with the room number,” and Rufus affectionately bumps his elbow against hers.

“All part of your charm, Peakes.”

 

 

**_mirror_ **

 

Their latest case is a rough one: a Potions Master poisoned by his senior apprentice, who was found in the apartment she rented above the shop with a stash of iocane powder and Death’s Head mushrooms, and absolutely no idea how they got there. The girl was sobbing when Frank and Edgar brought her in, begging and pleading while they practically carried her into lockup, and Alice had to look away when they shut the bars behind her. Everything about her read “jilted lover,” but Moody thinks it’s more than that – it’s too neat, he says, too easy. Imperius use is on the rise, and they need to dig deeper.

The interrogation room is occupied: Severus Snape, just out of Hogwarts, Tiresias Boot’s younger protégée and the unlucky sod who found the body. Moody’s in with him now, going over his statement, and Rufus is leaning with his back against the mirror in the little antechamber while Alice watches through the glass.

“Can’t believe the fuss he’s making over a scorned mistress,” Rufus says, and Alice gives him a sharp, sidelong look.

“It’s not that.”

“Why, because Moody thinks so? Come _on_ , Longbottom, the whole thing reads like a Fifi LaFolle novel. The girl’s barely twenty, Boot was married, and even the Snape kid says they were always putting their heads together after the closing sign went up. You don’t need a NEWT in Arithmancy to do the math.”

“Just because _you_ think everyone’s sleeping with everybody –”

“That’s because they usually _are_.”

“– _Doesn’t_ mean there’s not more at work, here.”

Alice taps her wand against the mirror’s frame and the voices carry through the room: Snape explaining the apothecary schedule, scratching out a timeline on the spare bit of parchment Moody’s passed him over the table. He’s spotty and young, with dark, lank hair that keeps falling into his eyes as he talks about his work with Boot, the things he overheard between Boot and Aisling MacMillan. It’s simple enough chatter for a witness, but it’s his _voice_ Alice finds herself focusing on; smooth as a freshly-paved road, almost bored, deceptively calm. You’d think someone who found their master’s dead body would be a little more rattled by the situation, a little more upset.

Alice comments on this and Rufus flips through the short file they have on him. “He’s a half-blood,” he says, handing her the paperwork. “Slytherin class of ’78, but his mother’s a Prince, can’t say there’s any dark leanings there.”

“Slytherin?” she echoes.

“Not all Slytherins have the devil in ‘em,” Rufus tells her, “The dark side needs a couple Hufflepuffs, too, and some blind Gryffindor courage.”

“No, but we’re picking up enough of them to make me think it’s a pattern.”

Rufus hums in response and turns to watch the interrogation. Through the window, Moody leans in on the kid, one scarred hand on his shoulder, and Alice catches Snape’s flinch. It reads _abused_ more than anything, the way he squirms almost imperceptibly under Moody’s touch, but the way he keeps glancing at the door, the mirror, it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. They talk a few moments longer, and when Moody releases him Snape sweeps out of the room like an angry bat, his patched cloak flourishing in his wake as he rushes out the door. Moody stays put for just a beat, and then pushes away from the table and gives Alice a look through the mirror that says, _dead end_.

There’s a break in the case a month later, just before Aisling goes up before the Wizengamot, when Boot’s brother-in-law is caught fencing expensive apothecary equipment that was missing when they found the body. Frank and Edgar brought him in, and he admitted to Imperiusing Boot’s assistant into doing his dirty work for him. Aisling got out of holding and closing the case was quick and neat, all the corners folded, the loose ends tied.

The brother-in-law was a Nott, but it’s not like it matters.

 

 

 

**_running away_ **

 

They’re locking up the house tomorrow, Fideliusing themselves out of sight, out of mind, and Alice is in the Auror office packing up her desk. She’s not taking everything: her blotter is still crowded with the paper cranes she made out of old department memos, broken quills, old Drooble’s wrappers that she should probably toss in the bin. It’s late, the office mostly empty, save for a few janitors working their magic on the malfunctioning lights in Moody’s office, a pair of trainees with their heads bent over their MAGI research in the low glow of the overhead lamp in the kitchenette. She probably shouldn’t be here, not with Neville still down with a cold, but Alice knows Frank will forgive her for needing a little space. She likes it like this, the Auror block quiet and still in the absence of all her friends and coworkers, but she misses the hustle and bustle of the office in the daylight hours; being here now feels like she’s slinking off into the dark like a victim, like a failure.

“Still burning the midnight oil?”

Alice glances up to see Rufus striding towards their shared desk, dressed in nice dinner robes and wet all across the front. He looks surprised to see her, like he thought she’d already be gone by now, and Alice nods her head at his approach.

“Good date?” she asks flippantly, and Rufus sinks down into her empty office chair with an air of exhaustion, elbows splayed over the armrests, planting his feet firmly on the floor.

“She tossed her gillywater in my face and told me to never Floo her again.”

“So… an average date?”

Rufus laughs and Alice’s mouth curves into a small smile. A Pocket Sneakoscope, her Remembrall, a vintage pair of Spectrespecs, she drops them all into the box sitting on her desk. She already has some of her older assignments packed up, cold cases Moody gave her to put fresh eyes on, paperwork she was too busy to finish. At least now she’ll finally have the time.

Rufus rocks from side to side in her chair, oddly quiet as she gathers up her things. He knows she’s leaving: the Longbottoms have had targets on their backs since even before what happened with Edgar, and Moody sat down with him and Robards separately barely a week ago, explaining the situation. France, that’s the party line on where they’re supposed to be heading – some cottage in the south of France that Frank inherited on his father’s side, all blues and whites and sunlit windows, a meadow full of lavender stretching out beyond the property like a wide, fragrant sea. They can’t risk telling anyone the truth, that their little house in Blackpool is warded six ways from Sunday, with bars on the windows and Augusta as their Secret Keeper. Better everyone thinks they’re cowards than hiding in their own backyard.

“Didn’t think I’d catch you here,” he says. “Is it tonight, then?”

Alice bites her lip. “Tomorrow.”

Rufus nods, suddenly solemn. Part of her wants to stay, wants to fight; she’s known this was a long time coming, but it’s still impossibly hard, having to admit defeat, having to pack up her desk and disappear into the night. Alice opens her mouth to speak and finds that she can’t, feeling suddenly as breathless as if she’d been knocked in the chest with a bludger. Rufus leans forward a little in her chair, elbows on his knees, and Alice stops packing.

“What is it?”

He’s her partner. She can’t lie to him. “I hate that I’m leaving,” she says, “I hate that I’m leaving you all behind, and – and _hiding_ , when I should be _doing something_. It’s not _fair_. It’s not _right_.”

Rufus rises from the chair, the expression on his face so open and surprising in its tenderness that it makes Alice, already teetering on an emotional razor’s edge, almost feel like crying. “Don’t say that. You’re not leaving anything behind, Longbottom. You’re moving toward something. There’s a difference.”

He’s right. She knows he is. He reaches out to embrace her and she lets him, her head tucked under his chin and his arms warm around her shoulders as he hugs her tightly. _Run away with me_ , she almost says, eyes closed, nose pressed to the damp fabric of his shirt, _Run away with me, please, let’s go somewhere warm_ , and Alice opens her mouth just as Rufus pulls back, reaching over to pluck the last photo from her desk. It’s Frank holding Neville up to the camera, the two of them smiling and waving behind their cheap frame. Tears prick at the space behind her eyes, a lump like a frog crawling up her throat. She adds the frame to the pile. She loses her nerve.

“Everything’ll be _fine_ ,” he says, and Alice swipes at her eyes before any tears can fall.

“I know it will,” she says, and fits the lid on the box. “It has to be.”

 

**_fragile_ **

 

This is what she remembers:

An explosion in Flourish & Blotts, fire catching on the awnings of nearby shops and glass littering the street. The panicked crush of people in Diagon Alley, racing through the crowd where it branched off into Knockturn. Black cloaks swirling, red and gold leaves crunching underfoot on the chase. A flashbang of yellow light; red light; a scream; the ground rushing up to meet her as she fell to the cobblestone road. Rufus’s face sliding in and out of focus, his hands on her cheeks, _“Alice, stay with me – c’mon, Alice, don’t do this to me –”_

And then darkness.

When Alice wakes up in her bed at St. Mungo’s, it’s with a sharp, painful inhale, like she’d forgotten how to breathe. She’s bandaged like a mummy from her neck to her knees and she can feel the healing potions sizzling on her skin underneath the wraps and gauze. Frank is unconscious in the chair to her left, one of her hands clasped tight in his, resting under his unshaven cheek and two days’ worth of stubble scraping at her wrist. Rufus is on the other side, looking like he hasn’t slept at all, her hand flat against the knobby hospital blanket like he’d dropped it – like he was afraid of her catching him holding it – but when he sees that she’s got her eyes open, the smile he gives her lights up his whole face.

“Thought you could take on the whole gang by yourself, eh, Longbottom?”

Her voice is raw and raspy, but still she manages to whisper out, “I had them on the run, though. That’s got to count for something.”

Rufus ducks his head, chuckling a little under his breath, and she reaches out shakily to clasp his hand in hers. Her fingertips are slightly purple, but she presses them into his palm, and when Rufus looks at her again it’s with relief in his eyes, like she’s something fragile, irreplaceable. He’s never looked at her like that before.

“Don’t scare me like that, Alice,” he says, and his voice shakes, just a little. “You don’t… just… don’t do that again.”

Alice doesn’t say anything; it’s not a promise she can make, and not one she’s sure she can keep. She gives him a little smile. Rufus squeezes her hand and brings it up to kiss her knuckles, a light press of lips to skin.

A healer knocks on the door and Frank startles awake at the noise, Rufus sliding back so quickly that the chair scrapes against the tile floor. He shuffles out, almost embarrassed, when Frank leans up to kiss her, pushing her hair back from her forehead as the healer tells them to brace themselves for the news. Alice watches him go, giving him a reassuring smile before he disappears though the doorway, and when the healer tells her what her bloodwork revealed, her heart leaps right into her throat and stays.

She’s pregnant.

 

 

 

**_sunset_ **

 

She’s three months married and locked up in a safe house in Cardiff, Monitoring Spells on half the windows across the alley and her wand practically humming in her palm while they wait for their mark to make the deal that will bring him down. The room is cold and smells like the Muggle restaurant two floors down, Chinese takeaway drifting up through the heating vents. It’s been a long afternoon on their stakeout shift: there’s honestly only so much they can do until their mark makes himself known, and they’ve already gone through a few rounds of Exploding Snap and Scarab, Rufus nursing a beetle-bite on his wrist after the last hand ended in her favor.

They’re chatting about nonsense when it comes up – Rufus’s latest girlfriend, and how the unraveling of their relationship is in no way _his_ fault. Alice shakes her head as she shuffles up the cards. Going on three years partnered together and she’s heard all this before: Rufus is tall and athletic, with a vaguely leonine face that’s only highlighted when his hair gets long, and Alice has overheard more than one comparison to “prince charming” in the secretary pool. Rufus is also a workaholic with a short temper – and an even shorter attention span when it comes to matters of the heart – who goes through girlfriends the way some wizards go through shoes. This year alone there was the French tutor Edgar hired for his daughter, who was fresh out of Beauxbatons and whose only personality trait was “part-Veela”; Polly Cornfoot, the desk clerk at the _Prophet_ front office who baked him cookies and called him “Rufey”; and there’s no forgetting Isadora Selwyn, the shopgirl over at Madam Malkin’s who stormed the DMLE in a tantrum when Rufus failed to show up for a date.

The latest in the ongoing string of failed paramours is Elinor Belby, a modestly pretty, eager-beaver Ravenclaw who Alice remembers being a year or so behind her at Hogwarts. She’s an archivist now, according to Rufus, who was liaising with Gringotts in their estate appraisals until she got a better post elsewhere.

“She’s going somewhere Muggle,” he tells her, light from the fading sunset slatting over his face through the half-open blinds of their post. “Oxbridge, or summat. I don’t really remember what she was going on about, just some fancy Muggle museum.”

“ _Nice_.” Alice rolls her eyes. “Definitely good to see you were paying attention to this one’s hopes and dreams. _How_ do you get all these girls, again?”

Rufus grins at her, all teeth. “Sheer animal magnetism,” he says on a laugh, his face momentarily lit by the orange flare of a match as he lights his pipe. “It’s done me good so far,” he adds, taking in the skeptical look on her face, “I mean – not all of us can find our one true love in the office, _Mrs. Longbottom_.”

Alice groans good-naturedly and flashes two fingers at her partner, who kicks her under the table. She’s heard all the jokes – half the department have made them to her face, from Dawlish asking after the “MRS” component on her training exams to McLaggen’s running commentary on whether or not their newfound state of “wedded bliss” is what’s making Frank so sloppy with his paperwork. They’re a mismatched pair, she knows they are: respected and responsible Frank Longbottom, the handsome, by-the-book Auror Extraordinaire, shacking up with that moon-faced hothead Alice Peakes, Moody’s perpetually-scatterbrained pet, who somehow managed to light her own shoes on fire as a trainee not once, but _twice_. And even Alice wonders, sometimes, just what it was that Frank, so straight-laced and logical, saw in her that he found so appealing, but then she remembers that she is lucky enough to see a side of Frank Longbottom that not many others have. Frank works and comes home; he does the jumble in the _Prophet_ but always saves her the crossword; he cooks Sunday breakfasts and paints and can spend hours out weeding in their little patchwork garden. He gives to strangers. He’s _kind_. He sleeps wrapped up under piles of blankets, his face tucked against the pillow like he’s trying to hide from something, but always touches one of his ice-cold feet against hers like he _needs_ to know she’s there. Moments like that are worth having a mother-in-law with a vulture for a hat. They’re worth all the jokes in the world.

“You know I’m kidding, right?” Rufus asks after a beat. Smoke curls up from his pipe in small puffs, flourishing into artistic shapes; circles spiraling out into hearts, stars, a crescent moon. “I mean, if _you_ can find someone, then there’s _got_ to be hope for the rest of us hopeless cases.”

“Of _course_ there’s hope,” she says, giving him a wink as she adds, “St. Mungo’s has head-injuries coming in every day.”

 

**_wars_ **

 

Alice casts her first Unforgivable a week before her twenty-seventh birthday.

It was a bad job: Knights of Walpurgis, Death Eaters – whatever the fuck they were calling themselves this week – were targeting Muggles in Dover, three houses set on fire and marching down the road in broad bloody daylight to light up the whole damn neighborhood. Four children were dead – children on the Hogwarts registry, it came out later – and Alice still had nightmares about the adults, their necks snapped and bodies levitating over the burning lawns. It was a mess from the start, and when the call for review came down from the Ministry it was _Alice_ who found herself under scrutiny; not Frank, not Edgar, but _Alice_ , all for her “extended use of an Unforgivable Curse on a suspect.”

They needed a scapegoat, that’s all it was; the enquiry was a _farce_ , Moody grumbled at her as they made their way down to Courtroom Six, a disciplinary hearing for _doing her job?_ It was him and her and her department Advocate, a closed-room investigation so the Ministry could at least feel like it was doing something meaningful. Frank and Edgar were witnesses, Rufus pacing outside with them in solidarity, and the Interrogators on the small council went over wand activity and _Priori Incantatem_ s, whether or not Simon Wilkes, the Death Eater she’d cast the Cruciatus on, would be recovered enough to testify against his escaped hooded friends. Alice bites her lip while they go over the events of that evening and Moody stays her wand hand under the table, his nails digging into her wrist to keep her steady, keep her calm. _Of course_ her pursuit of Wilkes was _deliberate_ – how could it be anything _but_ , when she’d witnessed him mutilating the Muggle mother, when she’d watched him Imperiusing an innocent man to slit his own throat to cover his escape? How they even possibly _imagine_ , these wizards in their nice robes, high up and hiding in their ivory tower, what she has fought and hunted and _seen_ , and find her story _wanting?_

Alice testifies, Moody testifies. Her witnesses are called.  The council dismisses her to deliberate and Alice walks briskly out of the courtroom, careful to keep her shoulders back, her head high, her footsteps measured and light. Her fiancé hangs back to talk with Moody and Alice brushes past Edgar and Rufus to get to the elevator, riding up in silence to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement with her hands clenched into fists at her sides. The office is quiet, everyone out in the field or still down in the courtroom, most likely, and Alice strides over to the little kitchenette and tries to get herself under control, because even though there’s hardly anyone in the Auror block right now, Alice  _hates_  crying in public, and she doesn’t need anyone in the DMLE looking at her like she’s crazy – or worse, like something to be pitied. She takes a few deep breaths as she fumbles with the kettle, her hands trembling as she casts an _Auguamenti_ , pulls a mug from the cabinet, an ancient packet of earl grey. Alice leans over the counter while the water boils, leaning on her elbows and pressing the heels of her hands against her closed eyes. Tears slip down her cheeks as she thinks of the father of those poor dead Muggle children, his throat slashed, gutted like a pig; she thinks of Wilkes, baby-faced under that horrible mask, pulling all the strings.

She’d do it again, she thinks wildly. Hurt him, torture him. Someone like that – that kind of _monster_ – she would do it again, in a heartbeat, and the realization absolutely _terrifies_ her.

“Peakes?”

Alice opens her eyes, brushing her tears away with her fingertips, and when she turns toward the voice it’s Rufus standing there, still in his dress greens with his high collar undone. The look on his face is hard to read; she sees the wrinkle between his brows, the softness of his eyes, the way his lips are parted slightly, affection and worry rolled into one. It’s the look he gives the families of victims, the ones he wears when trying to soften the blow of bad news. Alice shakes her head rapidly from side to side without knowing why, backing away from the stovetop, from Rufus, from her own feelings, so clearly on display. Rufus is not a Legilimens but _Merlin_ , if there is anyone in this room – this building, this _country_ – who can read her like an open book, it’s her partner, and Alice feels whatever glue that was holding her together today peeling off in strips.

“Peakes,” he says again, “ _Alice_ ,” sincere and somber as he approaches her, guiding her carefully to the rickety pair of chairs at the table. The kettle goes off, then, a shrill whistle in the silence, and Alice watches dumbly as Rufus fixes her a cuppa, then grabs a couple biscuits from the tin Dawlish thinks he’s hidden so well in the back of the cupboard. Alice isn’t hungry and even the tea is off-putting, the mug cooling between them while they sit and wait for her fate to be decided. Rufus clasps her hands in his on the scratched surface of the shaky kitchenette table, tracing his fingers over her palm in the silence.

“You did the right thing,” he says, still stroking her palm, tracing a path along her lifeline and heartline, under the gold band of her engagement ring. “Those idiots – they don’t know what it’s like. You did what you had to do, Peakes, and everybody knows it.”

“I know I did,” she tells him, and he squeezes his hand over hers.

“Then don’t let them make you forget it.”

He looks at her like he wants to say something else, but Frank comes up to call them back to the courtroom and Rufus drops her hands like he’s been burned, her palms slapping against the table before she can stop it. She knows that things didn’t go as badly as they could have – they dismissed the willful intent charge, and the charge of assault with a deadly curse – but they didn’t go very _well_ , either. The council found her guilty of “conduct unbecoming of an Auror,” and sentenced her to a one-month suspension, without pay. Alice took it quietly, with her head held high. Frank told her it could have been worse; Moody promised to appeal; Rufus made jokes about getting shackled to Dawlish and that parchment-pusher Robards while she was out. Alice didn’t talk much on the way out of the Ministry, a box of paperwork under her arm, still full of shame at being railroaded out of her own job.

But in the end, even rolling thunderclouds have their own silver lining: on the first official day of her suspension, Albus Dumbledore paid her a visit.

 

**_weird_ **

 

“You cut your hair,” is the first thing he says when he sees her. Alice has been reassigned to the end of the Auror block now that she’s back from maternity leave, up to her eyeballs in cardboard boxes while she reorganizes the evidence room. No one is happy she’s here, least of all Alice.

“Hello, Rufus, nice to see you, too,” she says, not looking up from the sheaf of papers in her hand. _Fawley 2B-4691_ , _Carstairs 2N-4892_. Smuggling and kidnapping cases, respectively, judging from the clerical notes. She flicks her wand and the boxes levitate up to the highest shelf, hovering a moment before slotting neatly into place. She’s been doing this all morning and is already bored to tears. Rufus is still gaping at her in the doorway, knuckles white where he’s gripping the frame, and she fights the urge to roll her eyes because it can’t possibly look _that_ bad, can it? It’s just hair; it’s not like she transfigured her mousy brown locks into Medusa’s snakes, or bicorn horns, or deer antlers. It’s just _hair_.

“Come on, Alice _–_ ”

“Oh, me? Just _fine_ , thanks. So nice not to have Augusta breathing down my neck, and we hired a _wonderful_ nanny, fresh out of Hogwarts, Neville _adores_ her –”

“ _Alice_ ,” he says again, and she stops her prattling to glare at him. “It’s not – it’s just… _different_ , and _you_ don’t do _‘different.’_ ” Alice scoffs, rolling her eyes, and when Rufus asks, “Is it… is it because of the, you know… _the baby?_ ” she throws down her paperwork with an audible _smack_ against the linoleum floor.

The baby? The _baby_ is what made her cut off her hair? Not the fact that it’s _her_ hair, _her fucking body_ , and she’ll do what she likes with it? She should have done it ages ago! Alice shifts her weight and crosses her arms over her chest, fingers already itching for her wand because it’s not just Rufus and his lack of tact that makes her want to set his robes on fire, but the whole damn Auror block, the department, her whole _family_ treating her like a child, some fragile little girl who should stay at home, playing house. She knows her mother _and_ her mother-in-law would positively crucify her for saying it, but Alice has been mostly underwhelmed by the demands motherhood have put on her. She didn’t have a difficult pregnancy – she worked right up until two weeks before giving birth, even if Moody practically had to chain her to a desk for the last trimester – and it’s certainly not a matter of not loving or not bonding with her baby, because Alice has never, _never_ , loved anything (or any _one_ ) more than her sweet, chubby Neville when the midwife laid him on her chest, squalling and pink, skin to skin.

It’s just… she was going _mad_ in the house, sitting around with time on her hands, days and nights blurring together into a long hazy smear. Frank went right back to work and left her at home with a vulture of a mother-in-law hovering at every corner for eight damn weeks, feeling like some wretched, horrible barn animal with all the baby weight she still can’t seem to lose, and the nagging feeling that even though she loves her Neville – _loves him_ , would _give her life_ for him in an _instant_ , if she had to – she is still somehow not good enough. Alice was top of the class in Stealth and Tracking; she is a _Phoenix_ ; she can trace dark magic like she was born to do it and she always, _always_ gets her man, and still: there is the awful, scummy feeling that she can’t quite wash off, that she is _failing_ , that she is _weak_ , that there is _nothing_ she can do to change it, and until she chopped off her hair, it was eating her up inside.

“You want to know why I did it?” she asks, and Rufus, still staring, doesn’t say anything. His eyes are locked on hers, serious and wary, like he’s afraid of what she’ll say. She runs her hand over her close-cropped head, feeling the jagged stripe in the back where she couldn’t quite get it even, and can’t help but recall Augusta’s sharp look when she came to dinner, how she pulled Frank aside before dessert and hissed, _you know what they say about witches who cut their hair that short_. How it felt to take the scissors out of Augusta’s sewing basket and purposefully slide her hair between the blades; how it felt to have _control_.

“I did it because I felt… _weird_ ,” she finishes lamely, then clarifies: “I needed something to be _mine_ again,” thinking of Frank, the tender confusion in his eyes when she tried to explain why she hacked off all her hair. But Rufus – Rufus only nods, like he actually understands, and when he reaches out rest his hand on her shoulder, warm and steady, Alice lets him.

 

 

**_smoke_ **

 

She bums a smoke off of one of the waiters during the reception and slips out while Frank is entertaining a handful of his parents’ friends. The music is loud and the garden is gorgeous: gold lanterns woven through the garlands hanging over the dance floor, bobbing gently in the warm summer breeze, but Alice sneaks off to the back of the house, rearranging the fabric of her dress so she can sit on the stone steps comfortably, and without much mess. She glances about before lighting her cigarette with the tip of her wand, but it doesn’t much matter – she’s alone, here, as much as any bride can be. Alice isn’t a smoker, not really, but she has one now and again – long nights during stakeouts, over coffee and paperwork, a few drags between pints at the pub. Frank doesn’t like it, but right now it makes her feel a little more like herself, less like some doll brought down from the attic and put on display. She thinks that might be a good thing. The world feels a bit wider here, hiding on the back steps; she can still see the reception, all their friends and family come to wish them well, celebrating her marriage under a canopy of stars. Everything has been stressful today, but peace settles over her shoulders like a warm blanket now that she’s put a bit of distance between herself and the party. Alice exhales smoke in rings, her nerves still edgy but mellowed out somehow, numbed.

“All right there, Alice?” someone calls out from the shadows, and Alice swears under her breath at the intrusion. She stands up as they approach, gathering up her skirt and trying to figure out how to put out her cigarette without setting her wedding dress on fire, how to explain away why she’s off smoking, off _hiding_ , but it turns out to be for nothing. It’s only Rufus: grinning at her in rumpled dress-robes, juggling a drink and a cigarette as he lopes with an easy grace across the lawn.

“What’re you doing out here?” he asks, and Alice laughs a bit and gives him a look, dropping her pilfered cigarette and stubbing it out with the toe of her white dress shoe.

“Not smoking.”

“Thought you’d be in the thick of it.”

“I’ve had people fussing over me for hours, today. I needed a break.”

Rufus nods, and there’s a moment where Alice thinks he’ll tell her he understands and leave, but he just smiles and offers her his glass. She accepts it, grateful for the firewhiskey, grateful for the quiet company. Rufus smokes and she drinks and they don’t talk, but anything is better than the inane chatter she left behind: Augusta and her mother and her aunts have been pestering her since they left the church, _you must have spent an absolute fortune_ and _you know you can’t be an Auror when you’ve got a husband to take care of_ and _just when are you two going to have a baby? _at nearly every turn. Even Moody, old warhorse that he is, seems affected by the strikingly feminine picture his protégée has taken today; he took hold of her hand in the receiving line and gave her this look like they were saying goodbye – as if she wasn’t going to come back to the department in a week, ready to pick up where she left off on the Yaxley case, and simply disappear down a rabbit hole of pink ribbons and lace. Rufus, when it comes down to it, is the only person today who hasn’t treated her like she’s made out of glass, like she’s still _Alice_ , friend and Auror and _person_ , and not just the newly-minted _Mrs. Longbottom_.

“You look really nice,” he says suddenly, and when Alice raises her eyebrows he adds, “I mean, not all this mess –” he gestures vaguely at her dress, the layers of satin and tulle that make her feel like a walking, talking meringue – “But… yeah. You look good, Peakesy, and you’re – you’re so fucking _young_ , you know? Young, and _beautiful_ , and _in love_ , and everyone _knows_ you love him, and _I_ …”

Rufus trails off, scrubbing a hand over his face, and all Alice can do is stare. He’s drunk, drunker than she’s ever seen him, which isn’t saying much, but still: she takes in the softness in his eyes, the wry curve of his mouth. He’s her partner; she trusts him with her life, but she has never seen him looked as vulnerable as he does in this moment. He closes his eyes, just for a second, as if he's afraid she’ll see something there he’s trying to hide.

“I just… I’m _really_ happy for you, Peakes. _Longbottom_ ,” he corrects, his mouth stretching into a smile that’s just a little too wide. “Really happy. You deserve it.”

Rufus reaches out and gives her arm a reassuring squeeze, and Alice looks up at him through her eyelashes, all the breath suddenly out of her. She opens her mouth and then thinks better of it, finishing the firewhiskey instead and vanishing the empty glass. The cigarette is burning to ash in Rufus’s hand and Alice takes it from him without thinking, his eyes on hers while she takes a long drag, the two of them alone in the shadow of her own reception. She exhales and feels a little thrill go through her when he takes it back, thinking of the intimacy in his mouth being where hers was just a moment before; even in the low light she can see that her lipstick has left a pink smudge over the filter. Rufus finishes the cigarette and stubs it out with the heel of his boot.

“Congratulations, Alice,” he says, and Alice brings her hand to his face before she can stop herself, fingertips brushing lightly over his cheek. He laughs at the touch, which seems odd to her, but then Rufus pats her hand and walks away before she can answer.

Alice waits another minute before she goes back to the party, silent and still on the dark stone path, lightheaded from the whiskey, from the moment. The band is still playing when she returns and Frank is still making the rounds; he catches her eye across the floor and winks at her, and she blushes as she walks over to where he’s talking with the Prewett brothers. She loves Frank. She _loves_ him, loves how he automatically holds his arm open for her so that she can slide in right beside him; loves how the corners of his eyes crinkle when he laughs at whatever Fabian says; loves how kind and gentle and sensible he is, loves how he tangles his fingers with hers to keep her steady, keep her close. Someone taps their knife to their water glass and almost immediately the whole party picks up the sound, the garden echoing with the tuneless chime of silverware against glass. Frank laughs and goes red, and Alice loves him right then, loves him so much that she’s dizzy from the feeling.

“You smell like smoke,” Frank says in her ear, right before pressing his lips to hers.

“Blame Rufus,” she tells him when they part, and they leave it at that.

 

 

 

**_you & me_ **

 

They lose Edgar. They lose _Edgar_.

Moody is still at the head office and Robards is dealing with the Ministry fallout, the rest of their squad scattered into the late September evening like dead leaves. Dawlish is off comforting Amelia at the Bones homestead and Frank went home early to check on Neville, but Alice is still at the pub, two pints of Tom’s finest ale sweating on the table between her and Rufus, the last remnants of this sad excuse for a wake in the corner of the Leaky Cauldron. Empty glasses litter the table, most of them hers, if she’s being honest; Alice can drink most of the Auror department under the table, Rufus included, even if he likes to pretend otherwise, and Alice knows that drowning her sorrows means a headache to go along with the heartbreak she’ll be feeling in the morning, but Rufus keeps buying so she keeps drinking. It’s hard not to think of the last time they were gathered here: the lot of them still smelling of smoke, Gideon singed at the cuffs and collar and Robards bleeding through the bandage over his eye, Edgar at the head of the table, leading a toast to celebrate a raid gone well.

Happier times. It’s hard to believe that _that’s_ what counts as _“happy,”_ these days – light maiming, a stopped fire, a few dark wizards dropped firmly into lockup.

“Galleon for your thoughts,” Rufus says, prodding at her elbow with a fingertip, breaking the lull between them, and Alice shakes her head, feeling very maudlin and sad.

She thinks about Edgar’s Muggleborn wife, the Dark Mark burned into the wall over her head; their children – _children!_ – dead in their beds, that quiet, empty house. She thinks about Neville and the prophecy; about Rosier missing, Karkaroff on the run, about Flint dead on the parquet floor of Edgar’s parlor, and how nothing is safe, now. None of them are safe.

They’ve talked about it on and off since their meeting with Dumbledore this summer. Lily and James are going, soon – after what’s happened with the Boneses, they’d be stupid not to – but Alice was the holdout in their house, thinking that an Auror badge would save them, that there was protection in wards and laws and a respected, pureblooded name. She was so fucking _blind_ , back then, thinking that it was an honorable thing, even despite the danger, that Voldemort could have marked _her_ son as his equal. Alice breathes out heavily, closing her eyes, a hand pressed hard to her forehead. She is such a fucking _imbecile_.

“Do you think –” she starts and then stops, her mouth working faster than her brain can keep up. The world around her is starting to blur. “Do you think it’ll change anything? Catching them, I mean. Getting their masks off, showing the world what they are. Do you think it’ll make a difference?”

“It _has_ to,” he says, “It’s not for nothing. We’re fighting the good fight right now, like we should. We’re Aurors, Alice. It’s all we can do.”

“But what about _after?_ ”

“After?” he echoes, brow furrowing. “Come on, Longbottom, you know what’ll happen. The black hats will end up in Azkaban and we’ll be drowning in paperwork and Orders of Merlin for our meritorious trouble. Nothing else will change. It’ll be you and me at the end of this whole mess, same as always.”

Rufus lifts his half-empty ale over the tabletop between them, as if on impulse, and Alice does the same. There’s a promise in the click of glass against glass, neat and quick as a kiss, and she feels it. She feels it as real as anything.

 

 


End file.
